1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of computerized networked insurance methods, with a specific emphasis on travel or foreign stay insurance, travel or foreign stay medical insurance and health insurance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Insurance policies usually provide various types of coverage benefits (e.g. hospitalization benefits, ambulance benefits, emergency care benefits). Although prior art computerized systems exist whereby a consumer (user) may use a web browser to access a server and purchase insurance, these prior art systems do not provide enough comparative information and ability to construct alternative scenarios to enable a consumer or user to make a fully informed purchasing decision.
Thus at present, a consumer might purchase an insurance policy with a low premium without clearly understanding the various types of coverage benefits provided by the insurance policy, and the costs the consumer might incur when it is time to file a claim.
As a result, the consumer might end up paying a higher cost at the time of filing a claim. Alternatively, the consumer may purchase more insurance than is likely to be needed under most realistic scenarios, and end up spending more as a result. Both outcomes are unsatisfactory.
These problems are particularly acute when the consumer wishes to purchase insurance, such as health insurance, in a country other than that of the consumer's country of origin (usually the country of the consumer's citizenship). This is because consumers accustomed to the price structures in their country of origin may be quite unfamiliar with the very differing price structures in other countries, and thus may either under purchase insurance (e.g. not purchase sufficient medical insurance) or alternatively waste money by purchasing much more coverage than is actually needed.
Previous work in the insurance industry, here using medical/health insurance as a particular example, tended to ignore the problems resulting from purchasing medical insurance while traveling between or residing in foreign countries. This prior art, which was generally entirely one country based, includes Howell, US patent publication 2009/0276247 entitled “Systems and methods for web-based group insurance/benefits procurement and/or administration”. Other prior art with this type of single country focus includes Jinks, US patent publication 2002/0055862, entitled “Systems and methods for interactively evaluating a commercial insurance risk”; and Lind, US patent publication 2006/0248008, entitled “Method of evaluating a benefit plan”.